Greene County Schools partnered with Branching Minds to make it easier for educators to collaboratively document, review, and act on student data as part of their Multi-Tiered System of Supports practice. The district needed a centralized platform aligned with Georgia’s state guidelines and requirements for data tracking and identifying students who need additional support.
Greene County implemented Branching Minds to develop and monitor intervention plans in math, reading, and behavior. To ensure strong adoption, the district launched a comprehensive professional learning plan, including coaching workshops led by Branching Minds for MTSS leaders and classroom teachers. These sessions focused on building high-quality student goals and applying best practices for analyzing progress monitoring data at both individual and group levels.
During the 2020–2021 school year, the district experienced the following implementation outcomes:
Student performance was measured using the NWEA MAP assessments in math and reading during the fall, winter, and spring testing windows of the 2020–2021 school year. Although Branching Minds was implemented across all grade levels, intervention plans were more frequently assigned in elementary grades. To protect student privacy and maintain sufficient sample size, this analysis focuses on students in grades K–5.
To evaluate the impact of intervention planning in Branching Minds on math performance, NWEA MAP growth percentile scores from the winter and spring testing windows were analyzed.
The analysis included 124 elementary students who scored below the 25th percentile in fall 2020 and had subsequent winter and spring scores.
Students assigned a math intervention did not show statistically significant growth from fall to winter. However, significant gains were observed from winter to spring.
The 70 students who received an intervention demonstrated an average 35-point increase in growth percentile by spring compared to peers who were not assigned an intervention. (t(119.34) = -5.29, η² = .02; see Figure 1)
Reading outcomes were evaluated using the same methodology. The analysis included 122 elementary students who scored below the 25th percentile in fall 2020 and had winter and spring scores available.
Students assigned a reading intervention did not show significant growth from fall to winter. However, by spring, the 75 students who received an intervention demonstrated an average 17-point increase in growth percentile compared to students who were not assigned an intervention. (t(120) = -2.67, η² = .06; see Figure 2)
Further analysis revealed a significant interaction between grade level and intervention status. Students in grades 3–5 experienced a greater impact from reading interventions than students in grades K–2. (F(1,121) = 15.4, p < .01, η² = .12)
Students at Greene County Schools who began the year struggling in math and reading and received documented intervention plans in Branching Minds, made significant academic gains by spring.
The district also demonstrated strong platform adoption and implementation fidelity, supported by ongoing professional learning from Branching Minds to strengthen MTSS practices. Leaders report increased visibility into student support efforts across schools, allowing administrators to better understand, monitor, and guide the work.
As Greene County continues to refine its MTSS implementation, the district is focused on strengthening student outcomes while meeting state and local accountability requirements.